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2 Language, Literacy and Essential Skills Are Interconnected Language Speaking and comprehension Used to refer to immigrants proficiency in one of Canadas official languages Many immigrants self- report language ability as a key barrier to employment (LSIC) Literacy Ability to understand and use printed information Skill taught and learned Some immigrants have no/limited literacy in their mother tongue International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS 2003) was administered in English or French only IALSS added document use, problem-solving, and numeracy to prose reading more composite measure of proficiency Essential Skills Include IALSS measures - reading - document use - numeracy - problem solving and other essential skills - writing - working with others - oral communication - computer use - continuous learning Identified through HRSDCs research with employers, employees and educators. Used across all categories of occupations to enable people to adapt to workplace change

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4 Significant Differences Between Immigrants and Canadian-Born Adults 60% of immigrants, compared to 37% of the Canadian-born, score at levels 1 and 2 in IALSS prose literacy The largest gaps between immigrants and Canadian-born are in prose literacy and problem solving, and the smallest are in numeracy –problem solving strategies may be culturally linked whereas numeracy is more universal The proportion of immigrants within each proficiency level decreases by level The proportion of immigrants with a mother tongue other than English/French decreases by level BUT: close to 50% of immigrants whose mother tongue IS English or French perform below level 3

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5 Who are the most vulnerable? International Survey of Reading Skills (ISRS) Focused on adults who performed below level 3 in IALSS Performance on the component parts (print and meaning) necessary for developing reading skills Who are the most vulnerable? A sizable proportion of English speaking adults are at a high level 2, and need only some upgrading to make it to level 3 (Groups C and D) Among the native English speakers (groups A1 and B1) with very low LES, many may have an undiagnosed reading disability, and/or have not completed high school All adults with low reading skills (groups A2 and B2) do not speak English as their mother tongue What are the demographics of immigrants with low reading skills? A1 Very limited print skills, limited comprehension skills, English mother tongue A2 Very limited print skills, limited comprehension skills, non-English mother tongues B1 Limited print skills, limited comprehension skills, English mother tongue B2 Limited print skills, limited comprehension skills, non-English mother tongues C Limited print skills, adequate comprehension skills D Adequate print skills, adequate comprehension skills Segmentation Analysis

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7 Education and Labour Market Outcomes Immigrants are better educated than before, but with lower reading skills Among those at the same level of educational attainment, there are large differences between immigrants and Canadian-born –Foreign-educated male immigrants with a university degree have an average prose reading score that is 20-25% lower than that for a university-educated Canadian- born male About 2% of the university educated Canadian-born score at level 1 prose literacy, in comparison to 14% of established and 37% recent university-educated immigrants Despite being better educated than before, immigrants have lower returns to education than Canadian-born Most immigrants with low literacy skills are employed (63% of level 1 and 69% of level 2) Among Canadians with PSE and low literacy, there are more immigrants in bottom two income quintiles when compared to their Canadian born counterparts (40% vs. 32%) Immigrants receive a lower return to foreign-acquired university education because foreign universities generate lower levels of usable (in Canada) literacy skills Literacy skills are not the only reason for earnings differential, but they do play an important role

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8 Age and the Length of Residence Many adult immigrants with low literacy are in their prime working years Level 123% were between 16-35Level 234% were between 16-35 51% were between 36-5549% were between 36-55 26% were between 56-6517% were between 56-66 The majority of immigrants with low reading skills have lived in Canada for more than ten years Duration of residence does not have a significant impact on the average performance of immigrants in the four domains This raises the issue of how to ensure that adult immigrants improve and maintain their literacy skills

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9 Language 20% of recent immigrants spoke English or French as a mother tongue in 2006, compared to 48% of recent immigrants in 1981 More than 200 languages are spoken at present by Canadians whose mother tongue is neither English nor French (around 20% of the population) The growing language groups Chinese languages Punjabi Spanish Arabic Tagalog Urdu Except for Spanish, all of these languages are linguistically very different from both English and French More attention is being focused on linguistic distance- a quantitative measure of distance between English and other languages (Chiswick and Miller 2004)

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10 Areas for Further Exploration Understanding the relationships –between first language literacy and second language proficiency, literacy and essential skills –between the age, the length of residence, literacy and essential skills in English/French and the second language acquisition ceiling –Between proficiency in English/French and literacy and essential skills, in relation to changing linguistic patterns of immigration to Canada Best practices are not widely known and/or shared –How did some immigrants get to level 3 and above? –Which are examples of projects and/or promising practices?

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